In the past few years there has been large scale research conducted pertaining to the industrial production of carbon nanostructures for commercial purposes. Carbon nanostructures include buckminsterfullerenes such as C60, carbon nanotubes and graphene. These carbon nanostructures are expected to provide huge commercial value for electronics and energy infrastructure. As a result, billions of dollars are currently being spent globally on research on how to commercially produce carbon nanostructures in large quantities. At present, the most important carbon nanostructure for commercialization is graphene, which is a one-atom thick crystal structure made up exclusively of very strongly bonded carbon atoms. Graphene is reported by Rice University to be very useful as a constituent of oil drilling fluid due to its lightweight and incredible strength. Therefore, the oil drilling industry will have a demand for industrial quantities of graphene.
Recently, scientists at Northern Illinois University (NIU) produced relatively high yields of graphene by burning magnesium metal in dry ice. Dry ice is solid carbon dioxide that exists at a relatively cold temperature of −78° C. (−109° F.) at atmospheric pressure. Although the NIU scientists produced relatively high yields of graphene they state that the process by which graphene is synthesized using their technique is not clearly understood. According to the NIU scientists this is because the NIU process involves both a chemical reaction and a physical reaction. In particular, the chemical reaction yields magnesium oxide (MgO) and solid carbon (i.e., graphene). The NIU scientists speculate that the physical reaction results from a temperature of at least 3100° C. (5612° F.), which in turn may cause sp2 carbon atoms in the dry ice to have such a low retention time that graphene, instead of graphite, is formed.
Relatively small quantities of carbon nanostructures for experimental purposes can be synthesized with a known carbon arc technique. As stated above, it is also recently known that the NIU technique of burning magnesium metal in dry ice potentially produces carbon nanostructures with relatively high yields. However, neither of these techniques is completely satisfactory in producing industrial quantities (i.e., tons) of carbon nanostructures. For example, the existing carbon arc technique is not scalable to produce industrial quantities of carbon nanostructures due to inefficiency. On the other hand, the technique of burning magnesium metal in dry ice produces the unwanted by-product of MgO that must be removed in a costly process. What is needed is a process that efficiently produces large quantities of carbon nanostructures without producing unwanted by-products such as MgO.